A computer programmer , sometimes called a software developer , a programmer or more recently a coder (especially in more informal contexts), is a person who creates computer software . The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computers or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software . A programmer's most often-used computer language (e.g., Assembly , C , C++ , C# , JavaScript , Lisp , Python , Java ) may be prefixed to the term programmer . Some who work with web programming languages also prefix their titles with web .